Travel Writing

1) Choose a location or event that you wish to research and brief. This can be an area or event that you’re interested in learning about, one that you are already familiar with, or one that you have never heard of but discovered through a web search. 2) Research this travel destination or event. When obtaining information, think about what tourists are looking for when researching a vacation. This includes but is not limited to transportation, contact information, dates, hours, nearby fun, cuisine, prices, maps, and background information. There are many great websites that can help you find these points and other information. Here are some examples of helpful sites: a. The location’s home page b. Google c. Wikitravel d. Local chambers of commerce and city council websites will have info about their events e. Wikipedia f. Yahoo!travel 3) When writing the brief, it is important to use ‘key words’ in your brief which will help our site rank in search results. There are a few tools to use when determining the commonly searched phrases related to your topic. These phrases are important to include in your brief and should be bolded. There are a few ways to find these key words: a. Use Wordtracker to look up commonly-searched terms. The Wordtracker tool can be found here: [login to view URL] b. Keyword Discovery Tool is similar to Wordtracker. It can be found at [login to view URL] c. Google- Search the location or event name plus some keywords e.g. “Amsterdam festival” or “Berlin event calendar” and see what topics, events, and holidays appear. The first 3-4 pages of Google results are a good indication of what content ranks well and repeated phrases found in the top searches should be included in your brief.